Hey buddies,

can you help me with some questions? I have been practicing honing using my double sided EXIDE barber's hone, and a piece of 12000 grit chinese stone. I could get the thing sharp enough to take some of my arm/leg hair off, but when shaving my face it felt aweful, and left a lot of stubble. It didn't pass a hanging-hair test either. The HHT i thought was the hanging hair test, but others call it the hand hair test- as in shaving the hair off the back of their hand. Well my razor did that alright, but this hair is finer than my beard. So my first question is

#1) Does HHT mean cutting a freely hanging hair with the razor, or shaving the hair off the back of your hand.

Next up, I was thinking about getting a microscope to look at the edge while honing. THe $10 jobby at radiocrap is really only 100X, which to be honest is pretty weak. I brought my razor into the lab today and looked at it under the microscope there. At 400X it looked like a wood saw, with big, ragged teeth that were by no means even. I knew it would have teeth, but it looked like my serrated kitchen knife held about 12 inches away from my eyes. The teeth looked random and fierce. Under 1000X it looked even more so. While I couldn't quite see if the edge was rolling over, it didn't look it... it just looked like really big teeth. (I think I'll name my razor The Big Bad Wolf: TBBW)

Then for sh*ts I opened up a new STANLEY single razor blade and looked at that under the microscope. The edge was SMOOTH. I'm talking dead straight as a bullet shot, with no teeth. Even under 1000X I saw no teeth. HUH! I thought to myself about this, and wondered if this razor could be sharper than I thought and tested it on the back of my wet fingernail. It felt like it was drawing a little less than my straight razor. I tried doing a hanging hair test, and it failed to cut the hair as it fell across the blade. I tried shaving the hair on the back of my hand, and nicked myself twice, though it did take off some hair.

My second question is

#2) why does a single bladed razor have a smooth edge, and my straight razor have teeth? And which one is sharper, or which one will be the sharpest after correct honing?